Thursday, October 7, 2010

Many of the scambloggers have announced that they will be on hiatus while they try to get their lives in order and concentrate on the job search. I've been sporadically posting and plan to continue doing so because I'm too attached to this blog and my partnership with Angel to disappear entirely. But I guess there comes a point in time when things are so bad that you just don't give a #@*% anymore. I think I'm at that point. Maybe a lot of other Americans are at that point too which is why so many people have dropped out of the work force and stopped looking for a job entirely. Can't say I blame them when we're pretty much guaranteed a lost economic decade where millions of people will never find a full-time job again.

So, when I came across this story at William & Mary's website, I thought to myself, why the hell not? I mean, if your life and career are pretty much doomed, you might as well enjoy as much of what's left of your life before you're obligated to pay back that $150k loan.

In the early evening of September 2, 2010, William & Mary Law School Class of 2013 enjoyed a guided tour of Colonial Williamsburg to learn about the history of the nation's first law school.

Students were led through the streets of Williamsburg, stopping at historic sites to hear about the town's rich history. After the tour, students gathered in the Wren Building, where Law School Dean Davison M. Douglas spoke about the citizen lawyer concept, an idea incorporated into the law school's founding mission by Thomas Jefferson. The night's events concluded with a reception, where students continued getting to know their classmates and traded stories about the first weeks of law school.

Tour leader Tom Patton, program coordinator for the Jamestown Historical Society, recounted the timeline of Williamsburg's roughly 300-year history, including details about the Law School and its relationship with the town.

"The history of law is thick here in Williamsburg," Patton said. "You're now living in the preeminent living history museum in the nation."

Students visited the house of George Wythe, the first law professor in the country. An historian in full colonial attire related stories from Wythe's life, including his tutelage of Jefferson and his role in the birth of William & Mary Law School.

More law schools should put some of that $50k yearly tuition to more historical trips like this one. Really. Especially TTT law schools. They need to just stop pretending that they are serious institutions and use the money their students are throwing down the drain to do something fun. At least then the students won't be too bitter when they are unemployed or working at a $15/hour shitlaw job to pay off their $150k Sallie Mae loan. They can look back and say, "Well, at least I got to go on a tour of colonial Williamsburg or go on that really nice all-inclusive weekend trip to Washington, DC. Maybe I'll never get a job nice enough to live in one of these places, but at least all that wasted money went toward a few nice vacations."

Please keep blogging!!! I appreciate this blog and others like it because it reminds me that I am not alone.

It is one of the few public spaces in which I am allowed to express how I truly feel. I attend countless informational interviews and networking events and have to put on a big smile and talk up some spiel about how the recession is really an opportunity for new experiences, meanwhile hoping that my frustration/anger/cynicism does not percolate above the service.

Just like everyone reading this, I too will get through this, but I need at least five minutes a day to hear that I am not the only unemployed attorney who feels the way I do.

The only reason I started the blog was to shed some light on the reality of being a recent law grad and make a few people think twice. On the one hand, I know I accomplished this task. On the other, it has done very little to nothing in stemming the tide of lemmings going forth with a form of life suicide. At a certain point, no matter how insightful, witty or poignant my blog posts are, or how patently offensive, it becomes sound and fury signifying nothing. Like I put on my description: "No one takes responsibility. No one is held accountable. Nothing will change."

It is a shame. The problem is pretty much limited to the United States. I haven't heard of such a wide spread education scam in other countries...yet. When foreign friends complain about their yearly tuition being $10,000 a year, I just have to laugh. They probably have legitimate problems with their university and tuition hikes, but they are incomparable to those of American students. If tuition was hiked to $50k a year in France, you'd be assured there would be protests and riots in the street. I have friends and friends of friends getting their MA and even PhD from school like Kaplan and University of Phoenix and I just shake my head. How can the US government allow this to happen?

Thanks for the clarification and history lesson! We should contact W&M and tell them to make a correction to their article then: "We are not in fact the first law school in the country as we've claimed for the last 230 years". Haha. Do you think they will finally tell the truth? They should just say that they are the oldest law school still in existence.